He had shiny black hair that looked as if it would soon need trimming. He had large black eyes, full mouth. His nose looked as if it might have been broken once—even twice; the slight misalignment, though, didn’t detract from his overall good looks.
Consciously, she brought her mind back to whatever the problem at hand. It certainly wasn’t the time to be appraising the help’s physical attractiveness.
“What about the bulls, Ramón?” She wondered how he could be persuaded to just come out with whatever it was he had to say. She was beginning to fear that she might have to extract the information piece by piece, like a dentist pulling a cracked tooth.
“The dead bulls,” he obliged, finally, before stammering to yet another silence.
“The bulls that were shot…by someone, you mean?”
“Yes,” he affirmed.
“Why don’t you simply tell me what you have to say, Ramón?” she suggested, trying to be patient. “At this rate, we’re liable to be spending this day and the next rooted to this very spot.”
“The men,” he said, paused, and then continued, “brought in somebody. He’s out in the barn.”
“Brought in whom? Out in what barn?”
“They were angry,” he explained cryptically. “Understandable, yes?”
“I see,” she said, really not sure she was seeing anything at all but hopeful she was making progress of sorts. Eventually, the pieces of the jigsaw were bound to fall into place.
“It’s the son,” Ramón said so lowly that Alyssa almost missed what he said.
“The son?” she jumped in on the faintly delivered cue. “Whose son?”
“Señor Montego’s—Adriano.”
“Lalo Montego’s son, Adriano? Where?”
“Out in the barn.”
“He’s the someone who has been killing my bulls?”
“I think you should come,” Ramón said. “The men are upset. You understand.”
“Certainly, I understand,” she said, knowing intuitively that, come what may, it was an owner’s position to take the side of employees. Why was Adriano Montego killing her bulls with a gun? And, what was he doing back here, now, in that he had dropped out of sight during the time period in which the will was going through probate, surprising Alyssa’s mother to no end when he hadn’t protested the delivery of the Spanish property into her daughter’s hands? The way Alyssa came to understand it, Adriano would have had every reason to be upset by the share his father had left him, compared to what was left a young woman Adriano had neither met nor seen. For some reason, Lalo and his son were on the outs at the time the elder Montego met his death in the afternoon.
“If you think I should see him, then, of course, I shall see him,” she said. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you take me to him now?”
“Yes,” he agreed, obviously relieved. Had he actually assumed that she, as a woman, would break down and become hysterical?
They headed for the door where Mara magically appeared with a scarf for Alyssa’s head.
“You don’t want to get sunstroke your first day here,” Mara said.
Alyssa thanked her and followed Ramón outside, around the house, and off toward the stables and the barn in the distance.
She looked for indications of her other employees and saw none. It seemed strange that, since her arrival, she had seen only four people: Ramón, the foreman; Flavio, the chauffeur; Mara; and, the young boy who had delivered the tray of sandwiches and lemonade to her bedroom.
After all, the ranch had a permanent payroll of over one-hundred people. And, while some of those undoubtedly spent most of their time out on the range, watching the bulls, some of them had to be in charge of upkeep at the hacienda and its immediate grounds. Possibly, the regulars from around the house were just staying low, waiting to see how Alyssa was going to cope.
“Luís!” Ramón called.
Alyssa realized her initial surveillance of the emptiness had failed to pick out one man partially shielded by a couple bales of hay. He left his spot and headed in their direction. He had been so positioned as to have Alyssa wonder if he’d been strategically placed to keep people out of the barn, or to keep one particular person in.
Ramón made perfunctory introductions. Luís looked uneasy, almost to the point of embarrassment. Alyssa kept her greeting to a slight nod of her head in his direction.
“Quiet?” Ramón asked Luís.
“Sí,” Luís replied.
“Good.” Ramón continued forward, drawing Alyssa and Luís in his wake. He stopped beside the barn door and turned to Alyssa.
“They were angry with him, you understand?”
“I don’t care who he is,” she said. “He shouldn’t have been killing my bulls, should he?”
“Exactly,” Ramón agreed, hopefully beginning to realize that his new boss did understand, even if she was a woman easily misconstrued to be less likely to comprehend things like loyalty to the land, and to the bulls, and.…
“Shall we go in and see Mr. Montego, then?” she suggested. She was curious to meet the son to whom Lalo Montego had left so little.
They entered the shadows of the barn. It took her several seconds to adjust her vision to where she could even make out shadows within shadows.
The place smelled as only a barn could smell: a not totally unpleasant mingling of hay and straw, of animal and animal dung. There were no animals in immediate evidence, though. Alyssa assumed the horses were kept in the separate stable complex. Whatever animals lived here on a permanent basis (cows?), were obviously now out to pasture.
“Over here,” Ramón guided.
She wasn’t sure of her coordination in strange surroundings and followed slowly. Luís took up the rear.
Ramón led the way to a far stall. At first, Alyssa couldn’t see Adriano Montego at all.
“My God!” she exclaimed when she finally did see him curled up in a battered ball on a compressed pile of hay against the wall.
Ramón and Luís exchanged nervous glances of which Alyssa was intuitively aware.
“But, then, if he was killing bulls, he undoubtedly deserves his present condition, doesn’t he?” she ventured in an attempt to put Ramón and Luís more at ease. In actuality, she wasn’t at all sure that killing a few dumb animals should have really warranted beating Adriano quite so badly. “Still, I suppose the most humane thing would be to get him a doctor.” She turned to Ramón. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Of course,” he said. The last thing he wanted was a dead Adriano Montego in the hacienda barn.
“You know of a doctor who would be discreet?” Alyssa continued, trying to assuage whatever her foreman’s continuing obvious fears. She had knelt by Adriano’s body, afraid he was already dead. Her immediate fears had been somewhat lessened by the pulse evident at the base of his throat seen without her even having to touch it.
“Luís, go get Leandro!” Ramón commanded. He turned to Alyssa and explained, “Leandro isn’t a real doctor, but he knows enough to tell us if we’ll need Dr. Santos from town.”
Alyssa wasn’t at all sure she was willing to risk Adriano’s diagnosis to someone medically unqualified. Still, she had asked for someone discreet, hadn’t she? She didn’t want trouble to come from this, if it could, in any way, be prevented.
“Mr. Montego can’t stay here,” she said, thinking of very little else to say under the